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> As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments. As

> As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments. As much as I agree with this, there are better models than the Hadza where we have better records of (plausibly) pre-colonial culture and behavior—the san people, the aboriginals of Australia, many of the peoples of Papua New Guinea, etc. The evidence for this is that language seems to encode a lot of culture, and though many of the languages are rapidly vanishing we've documented many of them. (Think about how northern north-american languages have so many distinct words for "snow", for a particularly famous example, showing how language embeds the cultural relevance of snow and ice.) For instance, looking at just the art in the Australian record there's strong evidence for the emergence of very limited social stratification. This, in my opinion, gives significant evidence to the idea of some sort of pre-marxist "primitive" communism (I wish we had better terms as there are good reasons to reject "primitive" but I'm explicitly trying to quote marx here). Granted, the christians have done their best to "convert" away cultural evidence of many pre-christian beliefs, to an unfortunately devastating effect on our understanding of pre-colonial cultures all around the world, so the extent to which pre-colonial neolithic cultures were egalitarian and communal and non-hierarchical will likely be difficult to understand fully. ...but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. What would be the point without hoarded resources to distribute? And figures such as the nebulous "shaman" associated with animist cultures still divide anthropologists as to whether or not they qualify as social stratification—in many cases, this seems to result in less use of resources than others in the community, or usage of distinct resources. (and you also have cultures like the pre-colonial Hawai'i peoples that had such a ridiculous level of stratification and gendered use of resources that modern students often have difficulty believing the record—these trivially contradict the primitive communist narrative. But I say don't throw the baby out with the bath water!)

ch4s3 2y ago
I think you can grasp at the extant evidence of a lot of forager societies and see all sorts of social arrangements. Some of them may appear to be pre-MArxist communism if that's what you're looking for but the idea that it was ubiquitous is plainly false and there's scant evidence that it was necessarily common. For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). We know that the Poverty Point culture built great mounds, engaged in a trade network running from present day Louisiana to the Great Lakes, didn't farm, and built ceremonial spaces. We could go down this hole pretty far. There are numerous examples of foraging societies that held hunting grounds not in common, but among families by hereditary right. Many gifting cultures had a feature where people tried to accumulate personal property in order to be able to attract followers through their largess, some of the cultures did not practice agriculture. > but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. More recent work of "traditional" anthropology, as you've so derisively called it, has called this into question. There are numerous examples of cultures that were not sedentary agriculturalists who had complex hierarchy, personal possessions, social distinctions, and complex cultural practices. If anything it is increasingly clear that cultural difference and complexity was the David Graeber & David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything gives a great treatment to the subject and shows hoe political heterogeneity of ancient peoples and foraging cultures was far greater than previously assumed. I think that the records such that they exist show that per-colonial Hawai'i was less of an outlier than you may believe.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery. It's more like a permanent hostage situation than anything. To be clear I don't know much about the Sailish situation per se but that's true across many of the other peoples of North America. I'd be pretty shocked if Sailish were breeding and making commerce from human slaves when nobody else was. That said, this seems kind of unrelated to the topic at hand. Besides, there's a lot more interested stuff to discuss in the forms of stratification you find in north america, and stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee are a form of egalitarianism and stratification in the same breath—albeit one that intersects with the clan structures (which were, themselves, egalitarian). To be honest I'm unsure how gender intersects with stratification in anthropological literature (or I've forgotten), but that would be an interesting way to attack the concept of egalitarianism. I suspect/recall that was treated distinctly, though, as basically every human population alive today has some form of meaningful gendering. My point being: complex societies and complex stratification isn't itself enough to dispute the existence of primitive communism, even if I implied (incorrectly) it was before. The important aspect is communally-determined division of resources and labor under a natural economy, as you can still witness today (or in recent memory) on most (all?) continents. In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. I can't speak to the people of Hawai'i specifically, but I'd assume that the stratification (potentially re-)arose when hitting the population cap of the natural economy. Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. Graeber's own Debt: the first 5000 years gives excellent arguments how the introduction of commerce exacerbated basically all the social structures we associated with sedentary society. Just because you can find some cultures (as I noted with the pre-colonial Hawai'i people) that have stratification doesn't mean you should chuck the entire idea in the trash. It's still an extremely useful concept and comparison to the society we live in today.

ch4s3 2y ago

I think you can grasp at the extant evidence of a lot of forager societies and see all sorts of social arrangements. Some of them may appear to be pre-MArxist communism if that's what you're looking for but the idea that it was ubiquitous is plainly false and there's scant evidence that it was necessarily common. For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). We know that the Poverty Point culture built great mounds, engaged in a trade network running from present day Louisiana to the Great Lakes, didn't farm, and built ceremonial spaces. We could go down this hole pretty far. There are numerous examples of foraging societies that held hunting grounds not in common, but among families by hereditary right. Many gifting cultures had a feature where people tried to accumulate personal property in order to be able to attract followers through their largess, some of the cultures did not practice agriculture. > but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. More recent work of "traditional" anthropology, as you've so derisively called it, has called this into question. There are numerous examples of cultures that were not sedentary agriculturalists who had complex hierarchy, personal possessions, social distinctions, and complex cultural practices. If anything it is increasingly clear that cultural difference and complexity was the David Graeber & David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything gives a great treatment to the subject and shows hoe political heterogeneity of ancient peoples and foraging cultures was far greater than previously assumed. I think that the records such that they exist show that per-colonial Hawai'i was less of an outlier than you may believe.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery. It's more like a permanent hostage situation than anything. To be clear I don't know much about the Sailish situation per se but that's true across many of the other peoples of North America. I'd be pretty shocked if Sailish were breeding and making commerce from human slaves when nobody else was. That said, this seems kind of unrelated to the topic at hand. Besides, there's a lot more interested stuff to discuss in the forms of stratification you find in north america, and stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee are a form of egalitarianism and stratification in the same breath—albeit one that intersects with the clan structures (which were, themselves, egalitarian). To be honest I'm unsure how gender intersects with stratification in anthropological literature (or I've forgotten), but that would be an interesting way to attack the concept of egalitarianism. I suspect/recall that was treated distinctly, though, as basically every human population alive today has some form of meaningful gendering. My point being: complex societies and complex stratification isn't itself enough to dispute the existence of primitive communism, even if I implied (incorrectly) it was before. The important aspect is communally-determined division of resources and labor under a natural economy, as you can still witness today (or in recent memory) on most (all?) continents. In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. I can't speak to the people of Hawai'i specifically, but I'd assume that the stratification (potentially re-)arose when hitting the population cap of the natural economy. Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. Graeber's own Debt: the first 5000 years gives excellent arguments how the introduction of commerce exacerbated basically all the social structures we associated with sedentary society. Just because you can find some cultures (as I noted with the pre-colonial Hawai'i people) that have stratification doesn't mean you should chuck the entire idea in the trash. It's still an extremely useful concept and comparison to the society we live in today.